The Trend Trading Indicator scores the trend on 5 timeframes at once and only colors your candles when the timeframes you picked agree on a direction. When they don’t agree, the candles stay gray, which keeps the sideways chop that eats up trend traders out of your signals.
This page covers how the trend gets scored, what each signal means, all 18 alerts, every setting and exactly what can change on a live candle. It was built by Lane Dotson, an active futures trader since 2013 who builds every Trend Friend indicator himself.
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WHAT IT DOES
Everything on this indicator runs through one master trend. Here are the pieces that build it and the tools that sit around it.
The master trend is the gate for every signal on this indicator. Your candles turn aqua when every timeframe you turned on for the master trend reads bullish, orange when they all read bearish, and gray when they disagree or a filter says the market is ranging. Gray means stand aside.
All 3 colors can be changed in the settings. Make sure you turn off your chart’s own candle coloring (gear icon, Symbol tab) so it doesn’t cover up the indicator’s colors. Leave the borders on so you can still see the live candle if the color paints a second late.
The bottom panel shows a live score for each of your 5 timeframes as its own small oscillator: green for bullish, red for bearish and gray for ranging. A label next to each one shows the timeframe, the score out of the max and a Buy, Sell or Wait reading.
Every timeframe gets scored, even the ones you turned off for the master trend. So you can flip through your watchlist and see in a second which markets are trending on every timeframe and which ones are dead, without switching chart timeframes.
There are 3 separate filters, and you point each one at any of your 5 timeframes. When a timeframe you’re watching reads as ranging, every signal is blocked until it starts trending again, because signals in sideways markets fail more often. Use 1, 2 or all 3, and make sure you scroll back through history to see how each combo changes the signals before you trade with it.
Turn on Signals Only Allowed In Direction Of Timeframes 4 & 5 and any signal that goes against your 2 longest timeframes gets blocked. It still works when timeframes 4 and 5 are turned off for the master trend. Markets tend to move cleaner in the direction of the overall trend and chop hard against it, so this keeps you on the side the bigger trend is pushing. It’s off by default.
The indicator sends out a value named Trend Direction To Send To External Indicators: 1 when the master trend is bullish, -1 when it’s bearish and 0 when there’s no trend. Any indicator on the same chart with a source input can read it, so you can block that indicator’s buys in a downtrend, its sells in an uptrend, or all of its signals while the market is ranging. You’ll find it at the bottom of the Style tab. Here’s how to filter signals with it.
UNDER THE HOOD
On every candle, each of your 5 timeframes gets its own trend strength score from a set of custom formulas. Each formula checks a different part of how that timeframe is trading:
Bullish checks add points and bearish checks take points away. A score close to zero means that timeframe is ranging, so it reads neutral. The exact formulas, point values and window lengths stay private, which is why the code is closed, but these are the things they measure. What makes this different from a one timeframe trend tool is that all 5 timeframes get scored at once and every signal has to get through them together.
The formulas measure set amounts of trading time instead of a set number of candles, so the indicator needs to know how many hours a day your market trades. That’s what the Market Hours setting is for, and it has to match the symbol you’re on.
ENTRY & CONFLUENCE
Every signal below only shows up while the master trend is active, and each type has its own on/off switch.
These print when a bigger than normal candle dips into one of the indicator’s internal trend levels and then closes strong in the trend direction. They come in 3 sizes. Each bigger size needs price to take back a deeper level, so the bigger the cross, the deeper the level that got reclaimed.
One way to use them: take the entry on the cross, put your stop just past the most recent major pivot, and trail your stop as the trade moves your way.
These need a strong trend on timeframes 3 to 5, a pullback on the shorter timeframes, and then a strong candle that turns back with the bigger trend while it forms a pivot. The pullback already happened before the tag prints, so you’re joining the trend right as the short term pressure flips back its way. They show up as small label tags above or below the candles.
Two separate strong trend formulas power this one. One puts a circle above or below the candle and the other paints the chart background. When you see both at the same time, both formulas agree the trend is strong. Use them as confirmation to hold your position instead of second guessing every small candle that goes against you.
When the combined score of every timeframe you turned on reaches a high share of the max possible score, the bottom panel background paints in the trend direction. That’s the indicator telling you the trend is strong across the board.
STAY NOTIFIED
Every alert waits for the candle to close before it fires, so you never get pinged on a signal that could still change. There are 18 of them:
Set them up from TradingView’s alert menu so you hear about strong trends on markets you don’t have open.
SIGNAL CONFIRMATION
Once a candle closes, its color, signals, scores and background are locked in for good. They can’t be removed, moved or redrawn later, so what you see on closed candles in history is what you would have seen live when each of those candles closed.
All the checks also run on the candle that’s still forming, so you can catch a move early. That means a signal or candle color can show up and then change before the candle closes. If you only want confirmed signals, wait for the candle to close with the signal still showing. The alerts already do this for you.
Each timeframe’s measures come from 2 places, and neither one repaints. The rolling data windows behind the scores only take in candles that have fully closed, so each piece of data goes in once and never changes. The last candle values for each timeframe come only from that timeframe’s last fully closed candle, which only updates when a new candle of that timeframe finishes. The indicator never reads data that wasn’t there yet.
A timeframe’s score reads 0 and stays neutral until a full window of data has loaded for it. So the oldest part of a fresh chart shows gray candles and neutral scores instead of readings built from half the data. On very low chart timeframes, especially seconds charts, more of the older history stays neutral because TradingView limits how much lower timeframe data it loads.
CONFIGURATION
Set Timeframe #1 higher than your chart, then make each timeframe after it one step higher. Keep all 5 in order even when some are turned off, because several signals use all 5 and each timeframe gets compared to the next one up. Each slot can be set to 5, 10, 15, 60, 240, 1D, 1W, 1M, 3M, 6M or 12M.
All 4 signal types are on by default, and each one has its own switch:
MARKETS & TIMEFRAMES
It works on any chart timeframe, from seconds charts to custom ones like 45 minute or 3 hour. The one rule is that all 5 of your trend timeframes have to be higher than your chart timeframe. For intraday trading on the 1 minute or 5 minute chart, start Timeframe #1 at 15, 60 or 240 and step up from there, like 15, 60, 240, 1D, 1W. On higher charts, something like 240, 1D, 1W, 1M, 3M works.
If a timeframe is set at or below your chart timeframe, a warning shows in the bottom panel telling you exactly which one to raise. That timeframe reads neutral and blocks signals until you fix it, and the rest of the indicator keeps running.
Stocks, crypto, forex, futures and any other market with volume data, as long as Market Hours matches the market you’re on. The formulas need volume, so a symbol with no volume at all, like some indices, never turns on the master trend or gives signals, even though the bottom panel scores still move. Trade the volume backed version of that market instead, like ES futures or SPY instead of the SPX index.
IMPORTANT
GET ACCESS
Access the full Premium Indicator Suite on your TradingView charts. All 10 indicators, chart templates, and priority support.
COMMON QUESTIONS
CHANGELOG
When the Premium Suite moved into TradingView's Paid Space, the Trend Trading Indicator's description got a full rewrite to match the current version and the old release notes were removed to avoid confusion. This page reflects the current version of the indicator, so everything above matches what you get on your chart.
Added support for 1-second, 5-second, 15-second, and 30-second chart intervals.
Optimized request.security() calls to work within the limits of all TradingView subscription tiers, not just Ultimate.
Optimized request.security() calls to resolve runtime errors, added new timeframe options, and updated a default setting.
Added individual alerts for each of the 3 Strong Buy and Sell signals plus combined alerts for when any strong signal fires.
Fixed a label on/off button bug and smoothed out trend calculations.
EXPLORE THE SUITE
Premium Suite
Generates directional trade signals based on price action and momentum. Use the Trend Trading Indicator’s master trend as a filter to only take Buy Sell signals in the direction of the overall trend.
Premium Suite
Detects volume patterns and plots support and resistance levels. Combine with the Trend Trading Indicator to enter at volume-confirmed levels that align with the master trend direction.
Premium Suite
Generates swing trade and scalp entry signals with configurable sensitivity. Use the Trend Trading Indicator’s master trend as a directional filter to only take signals that align with the established multi-timeframe trend.
